5:21PM buttons on one of the machines inside a Chinese factory

On a cold, gray damp day, we trekked across the border into China. Shenzhen to be specific. Once a tiny fishing village, today Shenzhen has over 8 million residents and is one of China’s most successful economic development zones. Its massive, modern and sprawling.  And the traffic is unbearable.

Our first stop was Mission Hills golf club, the world’s largest and highest ranked golf club. Its also home to the World Cup of golf. Its a 25-minute drive from one end of the facility to the other. On the course, we were chauffered around by traditional Asian caddies—women. Here the women carry the clubs and hang on the back of speeding carts while wearing red outfits and helmets. There are hundreds of them all over the course. Mine got doused with water as a series of  course sprinklers blasted us while riding along the cart path.

But she quickly adjusted for the next series of sprinklers to avoid getting hosed.

But our shenanigans didn;t go unnoticed. Even on the golf course, Uncle Mao kept a watchful eye on us.

A taste of things to come when we spend next week in China.

At the end of the day, we headed back across the border into Hong Kong to grab some dinner. At the final checkpoint, a woman wearing a mask reaches into the car with a weird looking gun to take our temperatures and make sure we weren’t bringing back more than just pictures to Hong Kong.

We passed. They want to make sure we’re healthy so that we can eat things like 100-year old eggs for dinner.

yum. not really.